AI and Human Originality

In art school we used to grapple with this question: Is there such a thing as originality?  There is, but it is very rare. What might seem like originality are actually human thoughts built on the influences of other human thoughts like stepping stones across time. The new question is a double edged sword. What is the difference between AI and human originality and how will it affect the whole of humanity?

     So far, AI has been trained to follow the human model and is built on what already exists. But human originality doesn’t have the same boundaries. In the human world we have original thinkers, people who disrupt the norms and paradigms of their times. Among them: Socrates, who invented critical thinking, Galileo, who invented the scientific method, Pythagoras, who invented mathematical music theory, Einstein who created the theory of relativity or the relationship between time, space and gravity, and Darwin who created the theory of evolution by natural selection.

     Artistically, we have the Warty Pig cave drawing from the Sulawesi Caves in Indonesia. Drawn 45,000 years ago, it is the oldest known representational drawing on earth. We don’t know if it is the first cave drawing, but if it is, the early human who created this technology is also a societal disrupter and an original thinker. It is believed that cave drawings were created to either manifest a successful reality, like an upcoming hunt or to warn the population with a pictorial lesson of a failed or disastrous event. Or it could have been the cave drawings were a spiritual reality, drawn on the walls of the cave but a bridge between the real and dream worlds. It was a communication short cut for the whole tribe in perpetuity and also provided a soul for the community.

     Similar to the cave drawing, AI has been created to be a super helper or shortcut for humans by using its enormous memory capacity and super-fast analytical processing abilities to store information and solve problems. The fear is that AI will eventually overtake us and reach the point of singularity where it can perform intellectual tasks on its own and maybe for its own purposes. AI currently lacks awareness which is necessary to produce original thought and its own social disruptors. What AI can do is detect patterns that aren’t programmed to make it look like it’s evolving but this is not the same as original thought.

     Will AI eventually be able to develop original thought and societal disrupters and manifest its own reality? And will human art become the cave art for an artificial super being? Just calm down.

     Fortunately, we have a new group of programmers creating a new field called Safety AI. They are intent on making AI ethical and aligned with human values. The theory  of Safety AI was developed by Blay Whitby, a philosopher and technology ethicist from Sussex, England. Whitby has written many books and papers on AI, most notably, “Artificial Intelligence” in 1988. Whitby could turn out to be another original thinker and social disrupter for the history books.

     Humans appear to have an embedded genetic code that releases original thinkers into our population to safeguard our survival. We have developed the ability to recognize these individuals and so our future looks more hopeful than apocalyptic. While AI art is a tool for convenience and a language shortcut, the Warty Pig drawing cave art also embodies these ancient ideals but provides a spiritual outlet for the soul and the tribe. AI will never be able to provide human spirituality because it will always be perceived as a threat even if we are able to keep AI from developing singularity and even if we just use it as a shadowy helper.